Mixing church and city

Last week, I wrote about a neighborhood shopping center working
its way through the approval process. This week's column
contemplates a church and a school moving into the neighborhoods of
two different communities.

A Mormon church is slated to be built on Pauba Road, near the
housing tract where I live. The church recently gained the approval
of the Temecula Planning Commission, and some of my neighbors are
appealing that decision to the City Council. Fighting City Hall and
God in the same battle is a pretty tall order.

In a country that still honors freedom of religion, laws have
been passed that make it difficult to restrict the building of
religious institutions, be they churches, synagogues or mosques.
Houses of God have traditionally been built close to houses of
people.

My neighbors face the most difficult of NIMBY cases, and while I
admire their activism, I'm afraid their crusade doesn't stand a
prayer against God and country.

Nearby residents will be asking the council to reduce the size
of the church by 25 percent, limit the hours of operation and
resolve issues concerning a retaining wall to be built on the east
edge of the future church parking lot, along a draining easement
behind homeowners' back yards.

There is a time to fight decisions and a time to accept the
inevitable and negotiate. Church officials have made concessions
for neighbors such as decreasing the height of the steeple and
moving the church building further away from existing housing.

The council will find it difficult to overturn the Planning
Commission's decision that adheres to the city's policies. The
affected residents can best help themselves by working with church
officials to create an acceptable landscape transition between
their houses and church property, along with finding a way of
preventing their backyard drainage easement from becoming a natural
habitat for weeds, trash and mosquitoes.

The lord helps those who help themselves, and since the church
does the lord's work, I have faith that they possess the good will
to mend fences with their future neighbors.

Now that I have fallen from grace with my church-protesting
neighbors, I think there are some trespasses to forgive in the
neighboring city of Murrieta.

Where to begin with the Murrieta mayor's myopic madness? Jack
van Haaster's advocacy and defense of his daughter's 400-student
day-care center that gained the approval of a divided city council
is as politically damaging as Howard Dean's scream of campaign
death.

How could van Haaster discuss his daughter's project
individually with planning commissioners and then claim there was
no undue influence? Does he really believe appointed planning
commissioners felt no pressure when mayor-dad approached them
outside of City Hall to personally explain his daughter's project
to each of them? While some may doubt van Haaster's political
acumen, nobody can question his devotion to daddy's little
girl.

How could anybody blame Murrieta's mayor-dad for taking a
special interest in seeing his daughter's ambitious preschool and
swim academy project gain city approval? I don't know, Jack.